Slightly more traditional Blood Angels list

I have made a habit of playing some frankly ridiculously small Blood Angels armies. Using Dante's ability to make Sanguinary Guard into Troops, I've fielded two squads of them, two Stormraven's, two Furioso librarians, and five Death Company with a Dreadnought.

As well as providing a tactical challenge (to both players), this has largely been an excuse not to have to paint a lot of miniatures. More recently I have pushed that tactical challenge even further, replacing Dante with a Terminator Librarian, along with assault termies in a Land Raider. That means 0 scoring units - I can only win by tabling the opponent (although I tend to take draws as a win too!).

I even went so far as to tell a friend I would not buy any more Blood Angels, particularly not Tactical Squads. My reasoning there was to keep my army lists themed around what I see as the flavour of the codex - fast moving squads with lots of deep striking and jumping around the board. Tactical flexibility over tactical marines, if you will.

But one should almost never say never. This week I have ordered two tactical squads and a couple of special models in order to field the following list:

HQ
Librarian

Elites
Furioso Dreadnought with melta and frag cannon

Furioso Dreadnought Librarian

2 Sanguinary Priests

Troops

6x Death Company with Boltguns, one of whom is Lemartes

Death Company Dreadnought with Blood Talons

Tactical Squad with flamer and plasma cannon, sergeant has a powerfist

Tactical Squad with a plasma gun and a las cannon, sergeant with chainsword and pistol

Heavy Support

Two Stormravens, each with las cannons, multi-meltas and hurricane sponsons, plus extra armour.

This list is based on one that appeared in White Dwarf last March. The thrust of it is a two-pronged killing machine assault with the Death Company in one 'raven and a tactical squad and dread in the other. The Death Company are more or less guaranteed to clear any infantry unit in the game off an objective, leaving it to be held by the tactical squad.

In addition to the Dwarf list I have two Priests to give Furious Charge and Feel No Pain to my marines (and possibly the dreadnoughts too). I have taken Lemartes because a)I have the model and it looks cool, and b)he has cool rules and makes those raving loonies he's with even more insane in combat.

Similarly I have the Librarian dread in the list because a)I have two of them and they both look cool, and b) they are dreadnoughts with 20ft long force weapons! (On a more rational note, the Blood Angels have access to some great psychic powers and the only thing better than one powerful psyker is two!)

Another strength of this list is the amount of firepower it can put down in a turn. Angelus boltguns are great and all, but I have looked on in envy as my fellow Marine players have have used their two or even three tactical squads to gun down vastly superior numbers. With this list I have lots of strength 4 shots, plus lots of really nasty close combat power. The dreaded ork hordes may not be a problem any more!

Actually trying to take and hold objectives with two full sized squads is going to take some getting used to though and don't get me started on combat squads - the potential to take on four objectives all at the same time? Unheard of!

I started repainting an old dread as a Furioso last night and the other new models are on the way. Should be able to start playing them next week :)